Turning the House Over

Spring Break for mom means one thing!

It is time to turn the house over for Pesach (Passover).

During Pesach, Jews cannot own leven (Chametz). So we "turn the house over" in order to remove chametz from the house. Of course, it would be impossible to get rid of it all so there is an escape clause in which after honest effort, one can declare any missed chametz to be ownerless as the dust of the wind.

I started my honest effort yesterday. I always start in the bedrooms and move toward the kitchen. This makes sense because the kitchen must be made kosher for Pesach last, since we have to eat while the house is being cleaned.
Above, you can see that I have stripped the bed and am ready to go at it! I got the master bedroom and the masterbath done before I took N. to Boy Scouts last night.

One cool thing is the bathtub is finally in!

Bruce and a neighbor completed the work recently.

I got a shot of Bruce putting in the faucet and the spray attachment. The guys had gotten the tub in before I got home that evening.

You can see that the tub is now in the hole in the tile where it was supposed to have resided before the Bar Mitzvah. You know what they say about "best-laid plans of mice and men..."

By the way, that little white triangular shape to Bruce's lower left is Zoey's tail. Nothing happens in our house without her presence--except vacuuming!


Yesterday when I finished cleaning and getting everything ship-shape, I took some pictures of the bathtub in place.


It will probably never look so good as it did after I finished the cleaning job. I really wanted to turn on that hot water, start the jets and add some muscle ache bath salts--and that was after the first day of cleaning. It was relatively easy work.

Today, I was planning to do my office and the hall and possibly start on the living room, but...

I walked into the laundry room, and the cat sand was filthy, and the laundry room was is general disarray. When I opened the cabinet to get out the soap, I realized that there were drips and drops of soap with borax powder and baking soda all stuck to the floor. And cat hair on the curtains, and...well you get the picture!


I couldn't let that go a day longer without going completely nuts. So I ended up doing the laundry room.

That little room took 4 hours. That includes, cleaning the table where the cat food is put, cleaning the cat-tree (If I knew how to card and spin, I could knit with that hair), cleaning the washer and dryer, vacuuming the lint traps, washing the curtains, vacuuming the ceiling corners, walls, and floor, cleaning the baseboards (I love Murphy's Oil Soap in the spray bottle--gotta get some more of that stuff), and washing the floors. Oh, and I washed the window and the screen. It looks great!

But I did a lot of bending, stretching, climbing, and sneezing. It was very dusty. So this afternoon, my bathtub looked even better!

Since N. is mostly working on Kemana, he did that but helped with the cleaning, too!

Yesterday, he cleaned the front porch and picked up litter from the yard. It is amazing what gets under the snow!

Today, N. groomed the dogs and kept them occupied outside. (The cats live in the laundry room in the daytime because Lily and the cats don't get along well without supervision). He also took out the garbage and learned about "elbow grease" since I don't use a lot of commercial cleaners.

He also decided today was a good day to cut back the purple sage and the desert lilac in the front dooryard. I think he might have done it with a samarai sword (wince) instead of the clippers...